TheCatasterismi orCatasterisms (Greek ΚαταστερισμοίKatasterismoi, "Constellations" or "Placings Among the Stars"[1]) is a lost work byEratosthenes ofCyrene. It was a comprehensive compendium ofastral mythology includingorigin myths of the stars andconstellations. Only a summary of the original work survives, called theEpitome Catasterismorum, by an unknown author sometimes referred to asPseudo-Eratosthenes.[2] This summary dates to the 1st century BCE or CE.[3]
TheEpitome records the mature and definitive development of a long process: the Hellenes' assimilation of a Mesopotamianzodiac, transmitted through Persian interpreters and translated and harmonized with the known terms ofGreek mythology. A fundamental effort in this translation was the application of Greek mythic nomenclature to designate individual stars, bothasterisms like thePleiades andHyades, and the constellations. InClassical Greece, the "wandering stars" and the gods who directed them were separate entities, as forPlato; in Hellenistic culture, the association became an inseparable identification.[4]
Chapters 1–42 of theEpitome treat forty-three of the forty-eight constellations (including thePleiades) known toPtolemy (2nd century CE); chapters 43–44 treat the five planets and theMilky Way.
† Not one of the modern constellations.
Of the 48Ptolemaic constellations, the ones not included areCorona Australis,Equuleus,Libra,Lupus, andSerpens. Inmodern times, Argo Navis (the shipArgo) has been divided into three constellations:Carina (the keel),Puppis (the stern), andVela (the sails); and the Pleiades are recognized as a star cluster within the constellation Taurus.
The work cites in some places the lostAstronomia attributed toHesiod. A similar later account is thePoeticon Astronomicon, orDe Astronomica (tellingly also titledDe Astrologia in some manuscripts that follow Hyginus' usage in his text) attributed toGaius Julius Hyginus.
During theRenaissance, printing of theEpitome under the titleCatasterismi, began early, but the work was always overshadowed byHyginus, the only other ancient repertory of catasterisms. TheCatasterismi was illustrated by woodcuts in the first illustrated edition byErhard Ratdolt, (Venice 1482). Johann Schaubach's[5] edition of theCatasterismi (Meiningen 1791) was also illustrated with celestial maps drawn from another work,Johann Buhle's Aratus (Leipzig, 2 volumes, 1793–1801).
After the oldTeubner edition of A. Olivieri,Pseudo-Eratosthenis Catasterismi (Leipzig 1897), the text has a new complete edition including the recensio Fragmenta Vaticana.[6] In 1997, an English translation and commentary by Theony Condos was published (including theDe astronomia), which the classicist John Ramsey writes "cannot be relied upon to convey accurately the content of the original texts".[7] In 2013, a Greek-French scientific translation and commentary by Jordi Pàmias I Massana and Arnaud Zucker was published.[8]